


Thinking

by rants_skellington



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Melodrama, directionless emotional ramblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 19:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5061670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rants_skellington/pseuds/rants_skellington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Saints weren’t even a gang when he was put with them. It was Julius Little and five random punks from Saint’s Row in a church that looked like a bomb had hit it. Troy didn’t even know why he was there at first. It was a joke, right? The gang was going to fall apart in a minute. He wouldn’t be there forever. (He stopped saying that. Not because he thought he was going to be in the Saints forever, but because he stopped looking for when the end was coming. He stopped waiting for it to happen. He stopped wanting it.)</p>
<p>Ramblings about Troy's time in the Saints.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thinking

Troy Bradshaw hadn’t grown up in Stilwater. He’d ended up there as a rookie cop, right out of the academy. They were desperate for cops in Stilwater. Practically begging for them. For a cocky kid with an itchy trigger finger and no desire to go back to his hometown, it sounded like a challenge he was ready to take them up on. And after all, he wouldn’t have to be stuck there forever. It would only have to be for a little while. He could get transferred somewhere else. Stilwater was just one city. He had options. He said that to his friends in the academy when they expressed worry about him going to Stilwater. Sure, the city was bad with the gangs but he could handle himself. And it wouldn’t be forever. (He stopped saying that pretty fast.)

Stilwater was stiff with corruption. The chief wouldn’t let him move without checking with the Vice Kings and the Los Carnales were running riot and always had been, that gang had been in the city since before Troy’s parents were married. (Los Carnales. Not the Los Carnales. Los means ‘the’.) He was complicit in the corruption. Maybe one day that would bite him in the ass but then and there he didn’t see what he could do and he didn’t really care. He did what he was told and he was good at it. He was a good cop. That had to be why they put him undercover. Because he was trustworthy. Because he was good at his job.

The Saints weren’t even a gang when he was put with them. It was Julius Little and five random punks from Saint’s Row in a church that looked like a bomb had hit it. Troy didn’t even know why he was there at first. It was a joke, right? The gang was going to fall apart in a minute. How could the cops be taking this thing at all seriously? Shouldn’t they be looking into the Rollerz more? But Troy knew the ‘Third Street Saints’ were under suspicion because they were the only ones not paying the cops off. He knew that. Even if the gang was tiny, taking down a gang was still a badge of honour to be won. It wouldn’t be forever. (He stopped saying that as well.)

(Not because he thought he was going to be in the Saints forever, but because he stopped looking for when the end was coming. He stopped waiting for it to happen. He stopped wanting it.)

The gang got bigger and more people came and no one ever doubted Troy. Not ever for a minute. He was Julius’ right hand man and he supervised the others, he was in charge. Cold and clever Lin with her sharp right hook, dependable and quick. Johnny Gat, all the directionless violence of a frag grenade, frantically loyal and woefully predictable. And then Dexter Jackson. Fucking Dex. Always a _witty_ comeback and a hunger for more that made Julius nervous but that Troy almost admired, in a way.

Dex was bad news and Troy sensed that. The kid had too much determination and he put himself first. Put himself above the gang. Troy couldn’t blame him. He fought with the guy all the time, constantly, over the stupidest things but what would the Saints be without the two of them fighting over Spanish and making plans? It wasn’t like they didn’t respect each other. Troy thought Dex was better than all this. He thought Dex could do more. Dex woulddo more. Dex did do more.

Julius Little was a good man but he thought he was bigger than his name. He thought he was bigger than all the mistakes he had made in the past. Troy didn’t know about that. Right from the start he could almost see Julius’ fall on the crest of the hill, a tumble down from the heights of hubris. Julius wanted so much and he made himself king of these angry, hungry children and didn’t consider that they could all so easily eat him alive.

And then there was Playa.

Playa was something else. Julius let loose a weapon of mass destruction and didn’t check that he could turn it off. And he couldn’t. No one could. Him and Troy would have to live with that. (Well. Julius wouldn’t).

Troy had lost a few nights over that, at the start. It got easier.

When the gang collapsed it all fell down at once, like someone had pulled the rug out from under it. It was a magic trick gone wrong from the outside, but the ones pulling knew what they were doing. He didn’t like to think of himself as one of the ones who had brought it all down but it didn’t matter what he liked. People would label him whatever they wanted. He was Troy the hero and Troy the chump in equal measures. Troy the cop killer. They really liked to call him Troy the cop killer. It was true, he had killed his fair share when he was running with the Saints. What else was he supposed to do? He was undercover. (They shot him first.)

Cops didn’t like cop killers. He heard them talking about him. They didn’t try to hide it. They all thought he was still a gangster. He was a fake gangster, he was a fake cop. (He’d spent longer working for the Saints than he had in the police academy.)

Maybe he was more of a gangster than a cop.

It didn’t feel like that when Johnny Gat tried to kill him. Troy had not ever, in all the years he’d known him, seen Johnny fail to kill someone that Johnny wanted dead. Sometimes he would awake and think about if Johnny had missed on purpose. Maybe his heart wasn’t in it.

But Johnny wasn’t that complicated and Troy thought it was just wishful thinking. They used to be friends, once. But Johnny was young and impulsive and full of bloodlust like Troy had never seen. And his best friend was in the hospital. And the only person he had to blame was Troy. Troy understood. He fucking understood everyone. Having sympathy for both sides was overrated. Everything was easier in black and white.

When he made chief (an obvious act of nepotism and publicity stunting on the side of the mayor) he stopped them from beating on Johnny. He didn’t have it in him to let them take it out on him. Once upon a time he had been Troy’s friend. Once upon a time the cops had been Troy’s friends too. He had a lot of people who used to be his friends. He could have thrown a real fucking party back before the Saints fell apart, if his friends didn’t want to kill each other.

When Troy hung out with Playa it was like old times again. Once a Saint, always a Saint. He had said it so many times. He meant it. He could never take the tattoos off. He could never take the years off. He had spent years in the Saints. He’d killed for the Saints. He had cried when Lin had died. He could never make that go away.

He’d read up about cops who’d been undercover. It never went well for them. They never went under that long and came back the same.

(You roll with people.)

Nothing had changed. The police chief (Monroe, Bradshaw) took money from a gang (Vice Kings, Ultor) so they could get away with crimes. (Ultor was a gang, Troy could only ever see them as a gang. Their colour was orange and their uniform was a suit.) Everything was the same except for Troy.

(Long enough.)

Troy had liked Julius. He hadn’t wanted to arrest his friends. He could have gotten so much more if he’d ratted on them all but he didn’t want more. He wanted his friends to stop hating him. But who the fuck cared what Troy Bradshaw wanted? Not a soul in the fucking world. Sometimes he got real bitter, got real childish about it, about the unfairness of it all and why did he try for them anyway? What was the point? Why try for friends who hate you so much? He hadn’t heard from Dex since that one phone call.

When ILL Wireless unveiled their new ‘call memory’ feature Troy had phoned them up right away. Turned out they didn’t store phone calls from that far back. He was almost glad. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from calling every time he had too much to drink. He thought about that phone call a lot. It was the kind of thing that played on you at night. Dex’s threat was worse than Johnny trying to murder him, somehow. He expected that kind of thing from Johnny, it was like getting scratched by a cat when you accidentally stepped on its tail. Of course it scratched you, it was a cat. But Dex?

(You start thinking like them)

Being with Playa almost made him feel normal, for a little while. For a while he was one of the guys again. They shot the shit and Playa drove badly and people got hurt. And then he went back to work the next day and looked his men in the eye and demanded their respect. He was not surprised when he didn’t get it. Maybe he should have stayed with the Saints. But what good would that do? How would he be able to help then?

It was better to be hated and do the right thing, than to screw everything up because you thought maybe you’d be happier that way. He told himself that when he couldn’t sleep and sometimes it helped. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes nothing would.

When Troy had been placed undercover they had told him he would be undercover for a few months. They just wanted to get the scope on things, see how things were sizing up. Years later, he was still waiting for when they’d tell him it was all over.


End file.
